Hard Brexit or Hard Brexit

[Scot Dutchy]

[Brian Peacock]

I see that Brexiteers are accusing the police of grossly over-estimating the number of people at the People's Vote demo in London yesterday. These bastions of the establishment are basically saying that the police are biased in favour of Remain. It really is an ideology.

Also...

Hardline Tories tell May: get ready for no-deal Brexit

Theresa May has been urged by hardline Brexiters to speed up preparations for a “no-deal” Brexit to put pressure on Brussels during withdrawal negotiations.

Sixty former cabinet ministers, MPs, economists and business figures signed a letter to the prime minister urging her to issue orders to departments to accelerate planning for Britain to operate under World Trade Organization rules if a deal cannot be done.

They argue that in order to have “real leverage in the Brexit endgame” the UK must reserve the right to walk away without a trade deal “and take with it the £39bn it has offered to pay as part of a divorce settlement”.

...

Signatories to the letter, organised by Economists for Free Trade (EFT) and released on Saturday, include the former chancellor Lord Lawson, ex-environment secretary Owen Paterson and one-time Wales secretary John Redwood, plus Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin and Sir Rocco Forte, chairman of Rocco Forte Hotels.

In it they urge May to warn her European counterparts that despite their “intransigent and punitive stance” they cannot delay or block Brexit.

They go on to say: “We believe you could also make clear that your preferred outcome is a free trade deal between Britain and the EU, an arrangement that is to the mutual benefit of both parties. “Britain is a great champion of free trade and looks forward to striking free trade deals with countries beyond the shores of the continent once Brexit has taken effect.

“However, in light of the reluctance of the EU swiftly to secure a free trade deal – eminently possible since we have been trading freely with the EU for more than 40 years – we suggest you make clear your belief that the UK has now to prepare urgently for the possibility that no agreement is forthcoming.

“Accordingly, we believe now is the time to issue instructions to UK authorities to accelerate their preparations for ‘no deal’ and a move to a World Trade Deal under WTO rules that, after all, govern the vast majority of global trading arrangements today.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard

[mistermack]

All this crap about how the economy will dip when we leave is further proof that we are right to leave.

How can you be independent, when the remainers are saying that we can't afford to leave.
There are two options, leave now, or become more and more dependent. That's what the EU wants, every country in chains.

So what if the economy takes a dip? It's worth it for freedom. What kind of a dip did the economy take, when we last had to fight off the Europeans? So what? It was worth it a million times over.

No deal is the best option, if the Europeans want to piss about. That way, if they want to fuck up our exports, we fuck up theirs. If they block our financial services, we block their wine and cheese. They should match it up, Euro for Euro.

[Scot Dutchy]

You really are that dumb to believe what you have just written? You really think the UK can match the EU? Do you have any idea what is going to happen with a no deal? You dont because like all Brexiteers you live in cloud cuckoo land. Do you have a few million stashed away in some offshore account? If you dont being a Brexiteer has no logic what so ever and in fact a very pitiful position to be in.

The Brexiteers are between a rock and a hard place. The EU has planned for a no deal last year and have all their plans ready. The UK is just thinking about it.

[Scot Dutchy]

For those Brexiteers that always say the EU did not treat Greece well:

Greece 'turning a page' as eurozone agrees deal to end financial crisis

Athens hails agreement to give country access to markets in August after final bailout

Still hope for the UK.

[Scot Dutchy]

This is how senseless the Brexiteers think:

Most Brexit voters feel a hard border with Northern Ireland would be worth it to leave the customs union – we shouldn't be surprised

Yep breaking international treaties does not bother them.

[mistermack]

But it means the left-led government in Athens will have to stick to austerity measures and reforms, including high budget surpluses, for more than 40 years. Adherence will be monitored quarterly.

Oh joy, Greece is now fucked for the next 40 years. There will be singing and dancing in the streets.

[Brian Peacock]

All this crap about how the economy will dip when we leave is further proof that we are right to leave.

How can you be independent, when the remainers are saying that we can't afford to leave.
There are two options, leave now, or become more and more dependent. That's what the EU wants, every country in chains.

So what if the economy takes a dip? It's worth it for freedom. What kind of a dip did the economy take, when we last had to fight off the Europeans? So what? It was worth it a million times over.

No deal is the best option, if the Europeans want to piss about. That way, if they want to fuck up our exports, we fuck up theirs. If they block our financial services, we block their wine and cheese. They should match it up, Euro for Euro.

When David Davies went before the Commons EU Select Committee in May this year he said that his ministry, the Department for Existing the European Union, had not undertaken any economic analysis of the possible impact of either a negotiated exit or the so-called 'no deal' Brexit. He admitted this despite his department asking all other ministries to undertake and report their own assessments of the impact of Brexit on their activities by Nov 2017, and also after repeatedly stating over a period of 12 months, both on the Parliamentary record as well as to journalists, that his department was involved in an 'ongoing and wide-ranging' economic impact assessment which would be available to MPs 'at least a year before' Brexit day.

When the Select Committee asked him to forward the grounds on which he'd based his on-the-record statements that the UK will "enjoy the same economic benefits” outside the EU as within it, he simply told MPs: "I was expressing an ambition." As one committee member noted at the time: "Without an assessment, you have mortgaged the country’s economic future to a soundbite."

The only government department to publish even a tentative assessment of the economic impact of leaving the EU, and then only on the basis of a negotiated exit in which the UK somehow manages to retain open access to the EU's free-trade zone, is The Treasury - and while its predictions were bleak that was published in May 2016, three weeks before the referendum.

So when Brexiteers categorise the prospect of a post-Brexit economic dip as "crap", and not only crap, but crap that proves it's crap by dint of it being crap, then they are making an unsupported claim, a blind assertion. At best they are, as Mr Davies put it, 'expressing an ambition' - a hope, an aspiration, a desire. At worst they are wilfully engaged in circular justifications while ignoring the realities of the situation and passing the kind of distracting, wishful, magical claims usually reserved for the fervent conspiracy theorists, the committed ideologue, and the pathologically deluded.

But though the government seems bent on not looking into the possible consequences of Brexit for fear of what they might find lurking at the bottom of the pit, that's not to say that Parliament hasn't been trying to gather evidence and analysis about Brexit's impact on the nation, whether we leave in in some negotiated form or in the form of the leap-of-faith from the cliff edge - the 'ambition' which ardent no-dealers maintain is the best of all possible solutions.

The Lords, under the auspices of the cross-bench House of Lords European Union Committee and it's six delegated sub-committees, undertook a comprehensive and wide-ranging review of the impact of Brexit across all areas, producing over 30 reports between October and December 2017. Among them a report specifically looking at the consequences of a 'no-deal' exit arrangement (Brexit: deal or no deal?, 7 Dec 2017 [PDF]).

That report states that a 'no deal' arrangement would be economically damaging, unavoidably so, that boilerplate WHO trade rules which would come into force would place the UK at a significant trading disadvantage with all major trading regions, that it would bring about an abrupt cessation of all UK-EU cooperation on matters such as scientific research, counter terrorism, law enforcement, and nuclear safeguards, and that it would necessitate the imposition of a hard Irish land border, among other things.

The Committee also doubted whether the government had either the political will, the technical skills, the bureaucratic infrastructure, or the time to successfully negotiate a legally binding transition deal such that the absence of said deal come Brexit day would force a no-deal exit whether the government preferred it or not. On this point the report notes that the only tenable option in the event of the government's failure to secure a legally binding transition deal would be to use one of the two options available under Article 50: to extend the UK's membership of the EU for a nominated period while negotiations with the EU continue, or to reset the March 2019 exit date for some time in the future.

Now, while ardent no-dealers maintain that there's only two possible options, either "leave now, or become more and more dependent", or in the parlance of the Rees-Moggs, the Goves, the Duncan-Smiths, and the de Pfeffel Johnsons (all men who express political opinions for money) "no deal is better than a bad deal", there are other options available, options which would reatly enhance the possibility of a 'good deal' - and a good deal is better than a 'bad deal' or a 'no deal' isn't it(?), even if it might take longer to organise than the Tories domestically politically expedient chosen exit date of March 2019.

Barring another referendum or a major Commons revolt, neither of which are likely, we are leaving the EU, but surely a negotiated and orderly transition from EU membership to non-EU membership -- a 'good deal', or at least a better deal than a bad deal or no deal at all -- is preferable to a leap-of-faith into the uncharted void, even if it did take five years to secure? The only counter we have to this possibility are mordant sermons from over-eager nationalists about how the UK will be miraculously transformed into a promised land of milk an honey and perpetually sunny uplands on 29 March 2019.

[Rum]

Well said Brian. As one can plainly see however MM and his fellow jingoistic xenophobia don’t give a fuck about the consequences for the people of the UK. It is al about blind nationalism. It is a kind of blind anti intellectuka patriotism that should be well on its way out by now.

[Scot Dutchy]

Entirely agree Rum. Well put Brian. The Brexiteers live in cloud cuckoo land because they are millionaires who have little use of the British economy and would be well suited to the UK being a tax haven. MM I dont think (maybe I could be wrong) does not fit that class of Brexiteer.

[Scot Dutchy]

Well May is going to meet up with a solid wall.

'More than 50' Tory MPs prepared to defy Theresa May to stop no-deal Brexit

Exclusive: 'Parliament will find a way to stop a no-deal Brexit happening if that’s what it takes - including Conservative MPs like myself'

[mistermack]

All of that stuff, whether true, or false, or just someone's guesswork, simply reinforces the fact that we are right to leave.

There's no point in leaving any fuzziness or uncertainty, by remaining under the EU cosh while pretending to leave. The fuckers would be constantly working under the counter against the UK, because they don't want anybody else to leave.

You leave, you get all your powers back, and then you say, if you want our trade, you have to give as good as you get.

What this also shows is the stupidity of successive governments running up the national debt by running deficits. You need a reserve, and it's been squandered by people trying to bribe the voters with their own money, on projects like devolution and public inquiries and compensation claims.
A bit of actual austerity wouldn't do this country any harm. People might actually get back in touch with the real world.

[Brian Peacock]

Services have been slashesd, borrowing is at record levels, economic growth is non-existent, there's a housing crisis, consumer debt is about tapped out, income inequality is widening apace and wage growth is at its lowest since the Napoleonic wars, and you think we need a moral corrective in the form of 'real austerity' to put us 'back in touch with the real world'? What world is that? The world of Dickens and Mayhew, of street urchins and cholera, workhousess and child prostotutes?

So many Brexiteers are incapable of contributing anything but the empty rhetoric they've been conditioned to parrot. 'Leave' is nothing but a religion now.

[mistermack]

Services have been slashesd, borrowing is at record levels, economic growth is non-existent, there's a housing crisis, consumer debt is about tapped out, income inequality is widening apace and wage growth is at its lowest since the Napoleonic wars, and you think we need a moral corrective in the form of 'real austerity' to put us 'back in touch with the real world'? What world is that? The world of Dickens and Mayhew, of street urchins and cholera, workhousess and child prostotutes?

So many Brexiteers are incapable of contributing anything but the empty rhetoric they've been conditioned to parrot. 'Leave' is nothing but a religion now.

That's why every second advert on the telly is by bookies? They seem to be doing rather well. Somebody's got plenty of money.

That previous is a load of bollocks. Yes, wage growth is low. But wages are enormous these days. They don't need to grow for people to be well off.
The only reason people are struggling in this country, is house prices. And that's down to far too much immigration. Pure and simple.
Take away the silly cost of housing, and people could be living really well in this country.
The average wage is about £550. My heart fucking bleeds for people struggling to survive on that.

[Brian Peacock]

Services have been slashesd, borrowing is at record levels, economic growth is non-existent, there's a housing crisis, consumer debt is about tapped out, income inequality is widening apace and wage growth is at its lowest since the Napoleonic wars, and you think we need a moral corrective in the form of 'real austerity' to put us 'back in touch with the real world'? What world is that? The world of Dickens and Mayhew, of street urchins and cholera, workhousess and child prostotutes?

So many Brexiteers are incapable of contributing anything but the empty rhetoric they've been conditioned to parrot. 'Leave' is nothing but a religion now.

That's why every second advert on the telly is by bookies? They seem to be doing rather well. Somebody's got plenty of money.

That previous is a load of bollocks. Yes, wage growth is low. But wages are enormous these days. They don't need to grow for people to be well off.
The only reason people are struggling in this country, is house prices. And that's down to far too much immigration. Pure and simple.
Take away the silly cost of housing, and people could be living really well in this country.
The average wage is about £550. My heart fucking bleeds for people struggling to survive on that.

As I said, you're just repeating the simple, one-dimensional excuses you've been primed with. You could do you're own research about what I stated, but you'd probably decide that anything which challenged the Brexit orthodoxy was #FAKENEWS planted by "Project Fear".

My other point remains though, your secondhand rhetoric is rooted in the notion that Brexit offers the UK a chance to administer a much needed and long ovetdue moral corrective to everyone and everything you disapprove of - and that's a very long list isn't it?